Like Toronto, Calgary is a city of contradictions. On one hand, it elected downtown progressive Naheed Nenshi as its mayor. On the other, it sends Tory reactionary Ron Anders to the House of Commons.

Proving Calgary has no monopoly on stupidity, Toronto, of course, has Rob Ford.

What’s more interesting, though, is how hungrily Calgary yearns for the very thing Toronto squanders — its urbanity.

There’s Cowtown, busily installing bike lanes, extending its well-used LRT lines, promoting the arts and hiring the best architects in the world.

Then there’s Hogtown, closing bike lanes, cutting costs and suburbanizing its core because “the War on the Car is over.”

Whether Calgary can make up in the next few decades what Toronto throws away remains to be seen, but the former is a city of enormous optimism. A recent survey found that fully 90 per cent of Calgarians believe their city is “on the rise.”

The same survey in Toronto would certainly lead to different results. This may be Canada’s largest and richest city, but it operates within a culture of civic impoverishment that has left us incapable of aspiring to anything more than the bare minimum, the least we can get away with.

Calgary, with its history of boom and bust, has rarely looked past the immediate future. When Nenshi was elected in 2010, he was the candidate who understood — perhaps for the first time — that, though few were paying attention, Calgary had grown up.

To Canadian media, his victory was significant because he’s an Ismaili Muslim. In fact, that had little to do with it.

Also noted was the fact the Nenshi campaign used social media effectively.

True, but what mattered most was that the mayor spoke a language Calgarians understood regardless of whether they’re young or old, left-wing or right, native-born or immigrant. He spoke the language of the city from the point of view of someone who inhabits it.

He talked about transit, housing and cutting red tape as well as street food, the arts and the city’s inability to raise money through any means other than property taxes and occasional user fees.

Beyond that, Nenshi also talked about “Politics in full sentences.” In Toronto, it’s politics in grunts.

The differences between the two mayors couldn’t be more sharply drawn. To the extent that each represents his city, there can be no doubt which will be best able to face the future.

Keep in mind, too, that Nenshi has a stratospheric approval rating that has hit 86 per cent at times. Meanwhile, Ford, who appears to be losing support daily, languishes at about 31 per cent.

Nevertheless, despite its impulse to self-destruction, Toronto lurches resolutely towards its future as a highrise city. When impresario David Mirvish announced recently that he had hired starchitect Frank Gehry to design a three 85-storey tower condo complex at King and John, it was just the latest sign that people are embracing urban life in a way they haven’t since before the last war.

The same forces are at play in Calgary, where condos suddenly appear to be everywhere. The East Village, a grungy part of town on which City Hall turns its back, is slated for massive redevelopment. Sitting on the shore of the Bow River, the new community will be organized around condo towers. Like Toronto’s waterfront, the site has been pre-zoned. That means builders know exactly what’s expected of them. The city has installed elements of the public realm — street light fixtures, a new edge along the river and a bridge across it — to transform perceptions of an area people have historically avoided. Developers from Toronto as well as Vancouver are leading the charge. The completed precinct will even feature woonerfs — narrow streets shared equally by pedestrians and drivers — as part of the pedestrian-oriented neighbourhood.

Even before the first condos rise, east-end Calgary got a huge boost recently when tenants began moving in to the Bow Building. Designed by celebrated English architect, Norman Foster, the 58-storey tower is now the tallest skyscraper on the Calgary skyline and easily the most elegant. In good Foster style, the exterior cross-bracing emphasizes engineering over architecture. But with curved bulk and glass cladding, the tower makes a powerful statement of Calgary’s new-found confidence.

And though it will likely go unnoticed, the tenants — energy companies Encana and Cenovus — successfully resisted the urge to plaster their names across the building, a move that underlines the civic aspect of the complex rather than the corporate. For that, all Calgarians should be thankful.

Not far away and also recently unveiled, is Devonian Park. It dates from 1977, but has been redesigned by Toronto landscape architect Janet Rosenberg. It occupies 2.5 acres on the top floor of a downtown shopping mall, but is a fully public park operated by the city. With its exotic plants imported from Florida and Hawaii, this is a space for families as well as lunching workers. And because of the Calgary Plus 15 system (like Toronto’s subterranean Path network but above ground), the facility is accessible on foot in all seasons.

Further up the road, Santiago Calatrava’s exquisite Peace Bridge — a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists! — crosses the Bow in high style.

Still, once the sun sets, Calgary empties out as workers flee to their homes in the ‘burbs. The sprawl here ranks with the worst anywhere. Despite the amenities and attractions, shopping, restaurants and bars, the city is a ghost town at night. Street life can be hard to find. Perhaps the most curious thing about it is that the opportunities are there, but few avail themselves.

That will change, too. In Stephen Ave. eateries, visitors hear talk about aging oil workers looking to move downtown, just to be able to get out of their cars from time to time. Traffic in Calgary is nothing compared to the GTA, but the distances can be a killer. And more often than not, people are either driving to downtown or from it. For a growing number, however, the best option is simply to stay.

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